A grateful goodbye!

So, did you all like 2021? Did you? Did I like 2021? Come let us relive my year. 

I'm just letting my thoughts flow over; 2021 was a year like that; Like a river that ebbed and flowed. Yet through it all, His grace was sufficient!

What can you say about a year where we as a family went from one hospital to another to another. From one specialist to another. From a cardiologist to an oncologist to a gynaecologist; The year in a gist, was the gists of the medical field put together. Yet, as always, the family stood tall! Taller than ever before. We laughed our way through the most difficult days. Wifey takes the cake. Extended family the cherry on top.

The blessings though, have been many! The biggest blessing of it all, are the much awaited children coming into our lives in the coming years. What a joy will that be, to hold one more of those God given dolls.

When it rains, it pours! And blessings did pour, as two more joined in the extended family. Marriage, the fun of cousins' wedding and two new souls joining the madness were fun. 

Friends have always been my backbone! Well, the backbone stood strong this year too. Everyday and through the lows and highs, they stood strong. A brilliant new friendship was formed. Best friend for life! A few childhood friendships renewed. 

Ever grateful to the passionate souls I worked with day in and day out. My team and my org were simply the best. Through every thing my life threw at me, they stood with me. Ah, what will be life without them?

I look forward excitedly for new beginnings. Newer roles. Personally and professionally. Meeting more people. More travel. A lot of reading and writing. Newer adventures. Newer challenges. Can life get more exciting? 

Did I like 2021? Well, 2021 has set up 2022 really well. For that I'm grateful for 2021. It wasn't the best. It sure wasn't. No major complains either. Just a grateful goodbye. 

Is nationalism a privilege?

"You are a true Indian", the friend commented. He even gifted me a T-shirt with the "India loves you" tag on it. I wore it proudly around. I was a young boy with fantasies of changing the country for good working for an organisation in southern Assam and had always worn nationalism on my chest. Loved the country to bits. Felt proud of the Army! (What was I then, a sanghi? 😟)

This brilliant Naga doctor friend, colleague and neighbour, always knew better than me. He spoke highly of the Naga's and their history. He had a brilliant understanding of the tribal lives, their culture, their socio-economy and every other thing about the Naga way of living! I mean, there were 1001 tribes and each had a way of life, and this guy knew it all. 

And he always, in his own humble way, said India hasn't been kind to them. 

I argued with him. Didn't really think it was India's mistake that the state of Nagaland remained backward(whatever that mean). Though, somehow, he always won the arguments. Obviously he knew better! 

When the Indian army shot dead 14 innocent human beings yesterday, my thoughts went back to those conversations. I can hear my friend shout out loud on my ears, "Didn't I tell you?, India hasn't been kind to us". 

I hang my head in shame. Any country which shoots at human beings, leave alone the adjective 'innocent', does not deserve an existence in this modern world. When you shoot at your own people, and that without any provocation whatsoever, it is plain barbarianism. The modern word for it is 'Terrorism'. 

The politics of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) which provides immunity to any action taken by armed men in the so called disturbed areas is problematic at so many levels. 

Why should armed men be allowed to freely use their weapon without control in a civilized society? What will be the mindset of young children growing up seeing armed battalion roaming around on the main roads? How does it feel, when you can't trust those who are supposed to be protecting you? More importantly, why should the armed men have immunity from judicial actions? 

I dare argue with the wisdom of my friend again! Life, as I grew older, showed me the mirror of privilege; To not know the pain of having armed men standing guard on your doorstep is a privilege. To not understand what it means to have police men shooting at your neighbours is a privilege. In fact, sadly, not being shot at, by the so called protectors, is in itself a privilege. 

Is wearing the badge of nationalism a privilege too? AFSPA deems it so. 

Better together!

As the night wore on and the clock stuck 12, not one person in the house had slept. ‘Diamond’, ‘Heartin’, ‘clawers’ and ‘spades’ ruled the conversation. It actually had been a tiring day, but nothing can be seen on their faces. For when siblings come together, where will tiredness reside?

‘J’, my little sister, had just got married. We (the cousins) had planned a prank and waiting for her to enter the room with her ‘just married’ husband ‘A’. Poor ‘A’, what is he getting into? We were playing cards, pulling each other’s legs. There was fun. Frolic! ‘A’ and ‘J’ just walked in. It was almost 1 AM and the prank was played. The sound of the laughter would have been heard across the town, for we “Laughed out Loud”.

As I went to my bed that night, I kept thinking about this beautiful concept of sibling hood! Not necessarily children born of the same parent. People brought together by blood and by will. People who consider the other as soul mates and as bloodlines! Beyond age and gender differences. Much beyond the oceans and the lands.

In a world divided and competitive, I don’t remember ever being Jealous of any one of my siblings! And I have plenty of them. We have fought and cried, but never have we borne a grudge against one of them. I confidently use the pronoun ‘we’ for I’m sure every one of them can vouch for my previous statement. Sibling rivalry has never been heard. Broad shoulders to lean on and warm laps to rest down have always been the norm. Perhaps, I’m one of the privileged few! Perhaps, this is how it is meant to be.

As the wedding reception went on, a small decorated area was kept exclusively for selfies’. The background read “Better together”! I took pictures together with a few of my siblings, whoever was available then.

For the world is better, when siblings stay together!

What would life be without sport?

"If Sachin plays well, India sleeps well"- Harsha Bhogle

The last 48 hours have been phenomenal for Indian sport. Yesterday night Indian men's hockey team beat our former colonial masters, Great Britain to enter the semi-finals. The last time that happened 74% of the country had not been born, including yours truly. Then the unthinkable happened. Indian women's hockey team beat the mighty Aussies to reach the Semi-Finals. Unthinkable, coz this hasn't happened before; It wasn't meant to happen either. 

As a six-year-old, I saw Leander Paes-led Indian tennis team beat a supposedly better french team in the Davis cup. I saw my dad wipe a tear of joy; The family friends in whose house the match was telecast erupted with joy. A young boy geared up to live the life of the sports fanatic! Not knowing that the path was full of heartbreaks. 

We did have the rare joyous eruptions! When Sachin blitzed the desert storm, Paes and Bhupathi won those doubles grand slams, Karnam Malleswari weight lifted the nation to a bronze medal, Pullela Gopichand lifted the all England, and needless to say when Abhinav Bindra brought home the Olympic gold. The heart exploded with joy! We shared parties, spoke about that for long hours, and certainly, slept peacefully. But they were few and far between. For, we were and sadly are, an ordinary sporting nation. 'Ordinary' would actually be an understatement!

Let us face it, for all the noise we make across the world, we are a poor country! Most Indians struggle to put food on the table. Even for those who can afford food, every day is a struggle. Struggle against our own cultural arrogance, moral ineptitude, and systemic failures. So, every sportsman performing at the highest levels has to do it despite the environment and not coz of the environment. That explains the minuscule chances to celebrate for us, the sports buffs, who search for the biriyani and often end up getting the bread crumbs. 

I'm reminded of that fateful evening in the year 2000! When Indian hockey was supposed to enter the Olympic semi-final after 20 years. Against a lowly ranked Poland. One minute and 46 seconds left! To protect the goal for a minute and 46 seconds is all that is needed. My heart could still hear the thud the polish goal made. I cried. It was a shocker. It has taken another 20 years for the Indian hockey team to make it to the Semifinals. That is how starved of great Indian sporting moments. 

Heartbreaks and joys; Tears and happines; Fun, excitement and sadness; Sleepless nights and prolonged party nights. Sport, live sport, has the remarkable ability to tug the inner hearts like no other. 

I gear up for another 120 minutes of heart-stopping hockey! Am I going to party tomorrow? Or is it going to be a painfully slow night? Ah! what would life be without sport?  

Amma Jokes!

I know I can talk about her forever! But didn't want to bore you all with her praise all over again. Anyways everyone knows that she was a great woman. A few days ago someone I do not know well, messaged me on Social Media and said "I want to live like your mother. I want my son to work for the community like your mother"; Once a friend saw my mother's photo in the purse of an autorickshaw driver. When asked the man replied, "She is like my mother"; One random woman approached my father and asked about my mothers' history saying, She is going to make her child talk about my mother in an elocution competition in school on the topic "Leaders I want to emulate"; Sorry, there I go again. Just randomly I start praising her again. I will stop here. Instead, I thought I will take this opportunity to talk about her naivety. Our 'amma jokes' in the family! And believe me, these are real and nothing is made up. 

As soon as she finished her MBBS, she joined work in a hospital near her house in Tambaram, Chennai. When they gave her the first month's salary, she took it back to the medical superintendent and told them to keep the salary, thinking that they have given her a lot of money and what will the hospital do if they gave her so much money. And that first salary was apparently Rs.800/-

Once amma went with appa in the car, with appa driving. When Amma's best friend G called her mobile. Amma replied, "G, I can't talk to you now, I have to concentrate on the road"! Okay, my dad is a bad driver. But my mom seriously thought she drove the vehicle every time she is inside one. 

Once appa was reversing the car, with amma for support saying "Varalam pa (Come come)"; Till the car hit a pole and believe me, amma genuinely said "Idichiruchu pa (It has hit something)". 

Amma never knew anything about any politics, and often had fought with me saying, "You are lying, people cannot be that bad". Sadly, she was put into a church committee for the simple reason that they had just created a quota for women and there were only so many people eligible and amma happened to be one. So in the first committee meeting, they started discussing and it became a debate/argument and she started crying and stood up and could not sit down it seems. So they walked her back home and conducted all the other meetings without her. 

Once she went out with her friend N, and N sent her back in her car with her new driver. The driver did not know amma's place. Sadly neither did amma knew the route to her own house (after living 25 years in the same town). So the driver and amma decided to ask someone, and they asked a policeman the route to the house. The policeman saw my mom and saluted her (Most of the town would have been her patient at some point). Now it became embarrassing to ask the policeman the route to her own house. So she just exchanged pleasantries and moved on. So amma finally made the driver get out of the vehicle and ask the route to her house so that the people on the road don't see her asking the way to her own house. 

There are so many. Amma jokes were a routine in the family. We laughed at her naivety and she laughed with us! She somehow protected the purity of her childhood from getting polluted by the darkness of the world. Perhaps therein lies the reason for being loved!  

I will leave you with her famous smile and a few more of my blogs on her. 

To read more about her please go through my other blogs on her

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-life-so-beautifully-lived.html

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-women-i-growing-fond-of-by-day.html

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-last-week-had-been-time-of-intense.html

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-last-night-with-mother.html

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2017/07/that-day-as-it-panned-out.html

The writer's dilemma!

I love words! Sometimes, I read and re-read and read again a few sentences and they sound so nice and beautiful. Like Illayaraja and his violin interludes; Rahman and the overtures. Philip Yancey, Dorothy Clarke Wilson, Dominque Lapierre, and Larry Collins,  Harsha Bhogle, NS, DB, and a lot more great people whose play around with words have had me attracted to the English language. 

No, I'm not a language connoisseur. Or a grammar Nazi! I just love the stories, the thoughts, put together like a bunch of flowers tied together on a thread. Single flowers do have the charm! But when put together, it sometimes is otherworldly. 

Did any of you guess my dilemma? I'm sure some of you would have. 

The dilemma of wanting to write, but don't really know what to! Thought block, is a word often thrown around I presume; But do writers also go through the phase where they can't think of anything to write? It sometimes feels terrible when the whole world around is chucking out so many books and here you are struggling to put together a blog. Just a 500-word blog! 

Many times I open my blog, start typing profusely and delete them all. They don't make sense. They just don't. I simply close the computer down and go back to the big bad world of small sentences, Twitter.  

I remember a pleasant October evening in Delhi when the mind just flowed stories. I wrote and wrote and wrote that day. Many of which are still in my drafts folder, but why don't such days happen often? More often than not these days I type and delete and type and delete. The mind just feels blank. Like a bubble wrap, it just bursts out air. 

So back to the dilemma. Should I just sit and push and put pen to paper, and call whatever comes out, a blog, or just wait, patiently and earnestly, that someday, some day, the thought block will be removed and the thoughts will flow like water gushing out of the opened dam. 

I'm waiting for the day the dams will open and perhaps, just write a book, than stopping myself with blogs😉

35 years of grace!

It is dark and eerily quiet. The sound of the blades of the fan cutting through the air is deafening. I switch off the fan and sit on my computer. To reflect and blog my life. The 34 years I had walked on this earth, as yet another human being burdening the planet. 

Where do I start? It has been one hell of a journey.

Life as I used to see it was never easy. For a long period of time at least. It wasn't ever meant to be. A few marks here and there and I could have so easily been a doctor or an IAS officer. A simple medical check-up, a few months earlier could have saved my mom. Little more effort from my side, I could have played for the Tamil Nadu state teams. It just did not happen. 'If only', had always been a phrase in my life for the longest possible time. That is what I thought for a long time. That life had not been fair to me. Or rather, it has not been an easy life. 

But when I reflect on life now, with all the wisdom of the years gone by, life on the contrary, has been ridiculously easy. Blessed will be a better word. 

How can I complain, with all the privileges I'm bestowed with? I wrote all my blessings down here and then deleted them. They are far too many to count and to be honest a little too surreal to show off. God has been incredibly kind!  Grace is the word I use. To describe a life that did not deserve all its goodness. 

Through the last year, when the world went through terrible times, I managed to live and work. To love and was loved. To find new friends and re-established contact with some old ones. What else do I ask for? 

As it has always been, I'm sure the new year is going to be full of dreams and incredible opportunities. Love and more love. Fun and frolic. Some music and writing for sure. Ofcourse the occasional nonsense. And a lot more Grace. 

That is how I have always known lyf!  

The Love will last the world!

A few days back as I went to sleep, this thought kept coming back to my mind again and again. By the end of it all, when the dust settles down and the bones rot, the air will still smell of love. 

When one of my friends told me yesterday, "I'm so proud of you", I got reminded of that thought again.

I had not achieved anything big, was just trying to put together my reading habit again. I was never the voracious reader but never was I a non-reader. Books had always been a part of my life. Till suddenly the social media bug bit me. The world of small sentences and images and videos had spoilt my hunger for books. Suddenly the mind settled for the low-hanging fruits of the twitters and the Facebooks. 

After many failed attempts at resuscitating the dead reading habit, this year I have finally gone back to the days of the youth! Ah, the smell of a new book. I set weekly targets and have achieved most of what was aimed for and it is already the 6th month. The inner human in me was flaunting this achievement to the dear friend. The human need for validation is immense I suppose. I'm proud of you da, she said then!

The brain lit a spark. The human heart aches for is pure unsolicited love not necessarily the pat on the back after a victory or achievement. Knowing me, I would have still flaunted myself for keeping such targets to read books, even if I had been a miserable failure and had not read a single book. And the friend would have still been proud, for there is love beneath that pat on the back. Pride is just the afterthought, an addendum of sorts, to the underlying love! 

Two people in my life have shown me what it means to love. 

The wifey is the epitome of it. For she could muster love through the most difficult of circumstances. When life sucks, when I'm at my worst behavior, through all the non-sense our families threw at her, she could carve out love, earnest, and sincere. 

Then my Mom. Her name spelled love. Dust on my mom's life has settled down. Her bones I'm sure are rotten. Life is so normal, that I sometimes find it difficult to imagine, how it would have been to have her around. Yet, all that remains of her was the love she showered on everyone around. Love pure and love pristine. Memories of the hugs and the kisses. The pats on the backs. The hugs. The smiles. And through it all, the love. 

Love shall last the world! For the human aching for love is real.  

Good bye great man!

"They asked me to buy a cycle for Rs.150/-. I refused; My boss enticed me saying I can get enough bribes to pay it back. I decided not to do it and walked everywhere till I could afford one", said thatha(Grandpa). I was listening intently to his stories. 

I don't know the man well, yet I secretly admired him. He was my dad's uncle. I know my dad had a secret admiration for the man as well. As we laid him down one last time, after that dreaded virus corona had already taken the life out of the body, I decided to let open the secret. 

He came from a very poor family. Lost his father early in life and had to work and discontinue studies during the initial days of engineering to support his family. Yet apparently he was so good with everything he did that his friends and the village elders supported his studies which enabled him to become the man he finally became. 

To become a civil engineer with the government in the early years of Indian independence would have been a blessing. India was buzzing with a lot of activities and he was in charge of building a few dams in my state. He climbed up the ladder quickly and very soon had the reach of the upper echelons of power. Yet, he never misused it. He was so particular that he never even used his official vehicle for anything personal. 

When I, as an arrogant young man in my early twenties, wanted to build a small bridge in the remote village of Assam, thinking I know it all and had it all sorted, he gave me a lesson in humility and work ethic I could never forget. He gave me the design I wanted, to the 'T', every line in its place. He was in his 70s then. Retired. This work of mine should have been the last thing in his mind. Yet, he gave his all. The bridge still stands. I proudly claim to the world, I built it. There goes one secret. It was thatha's! 

He had cancer for a year. Yet every time we went to see him, he never flinched. His face was calm and serene. There was never panic. The world around him shouted imperfection; craziness; loud white noise; Yet the man never showed anything on his face. 

After the dreaded virus had come and he knew the end is near, apparently the same calm remained on his face. "I have lived my life, I know where I'm going, let me go peacefully", were his words when the doctors suggested some surgery to help him out. And peacefully he did go! In fact, I have never been part of a more peaceful funeral. It was all so calm. It was all so quiet. The man reflecting life even after death. 

Goodbye, great man Perhaps knowing the destination was your answer to life! 

 

The blue jean and black 'T' shirt!

When you are born in a small town to a Gandhian father, apparels were the last thing in your mind! All we (my brother and I) knew were a bat and a ball and we cared very little about anything else in life. Not even when the first signs of testosterone came into the picture! One fine day my sister got married to this guy from the US and I saw him wear something which I had not seen before. Maybe I had seen it, but not cared much. That memory of him wearing it so casually on the day of his engagement said something about him. 'Cool' is the word. He looked 'cool'. That image registered in my mind! Then after a few years, one man was revolutionising the world with a new product called the iPhone. I knew who Steve Jobs was then but saw him on the television sets for the first time. He wore the same cool thing my sister's husband wore that day. One of my friends had gone to Chennai to do his masters and one day he was coming back and I went to catch up with him and there was 'J', wearing the same cool thing.

Years later, when I sit and type furiously on my computer, blue jean and black T-shirts are just another dress. They are still my favourite though, but they were once a young boy's dream. I may have bigger dreams now, but the dream of looking cool in blue jean and a black T-shirt of the young boy from the small town was part of his folklore. The folklore of life!

Food, bloody food!

I brought back food home from school in the evening! Perhaps I ate from the friend's tiffin box. It was made early in the morning. When my dad found out my tiffin box was full, it was already late in the night. The food smelt bad. Has it started to rot? The dad started giving me the food by his hands. It tasted bad. There was something definitely wrong with that. I resisted. Resisting my dad is stupid. No way he is backing away. He gave me the food and I ate it. Simple! 

He called me aside! You are not throwing food in the waste bin. There is no wastage of food in this house. I heard him well. The dad and his principles. My first lesson on food!

We were moving to a new place. The man guarding our office had a sad smile; His friends are moving. 'Saapiteengala na,(You had food?)' I asked him. 'Illa sir (Not yet)', came the reply. My friend and I were planning to buy the famous Ambur Biriyani for lunch. 'Ungalukku vaangava (Shall we buy for you also?)', we asked him randomly. Okay, sir, he smiled sheepishly. We bought him a biriyani and went on our merry way. I met him again in an hour, perhaps on the last trip transporting office things. 'Saapiteengala na(You had food?)' I asked again! Tamilian way of greeting, you see. He replied in the negative. I was a little taken aback. What happened to the biriyani? Why didn't you eat it, I asked him." I have kept it for my children, for they have not had Ambur biriyani before". 

Biriyani, the very same biriyani I eat every other day was way out of reach of the lower-middle-class security guard. 

Lockdown had just happened. The migrant crisis was hitting the roof. A group of like-minded people were trying to help the migrants by giving them food. Scores of people were made to stand in a queue and food packets were delivered. Everyday many after standing in big queues went back without food. A young boy, in jeans and a T-shirt with nice sneakers came along the side after finishing his first packet and asked, "Sir, aur yek packet hain kya, Mujhe bhuk lagen hain (Is there another packet sir, I'm hungry)"; The image of a bright young man begging for food is still fresh in my mind. 

Then that incident happened! I could never take this out of my system. Never! 'P', who works as a rescue worker and a childhood hero of mine pinged. "Sam, I need someone to be admitted in a hospital; Need doctors opinion" said she! I called my doc brother and together we went to check on this boy. 'D', the boy had not had food for a few days; 'Many', will be a better adjective. For the boy looked sick. Lockdown, parental problems and his own sickness made him dislike food. The photo speaks for itself. Let words not shadow the image.

On the day when the minister of state in parliament proclaimed that even stray dogs in India don't go to bed hungry, I'm learning a lesson. A big one at that. 

Food, bloody food, something which I take for granted is a privilege. Food, that which has given 'the foodie' in me so much joy, is grace. For I don't deserve it.

Travesty of the childhood dreams!

You dream; dream big. Dream to be like 'X'; Dream to be like 'Y'. 

Didn't we all dream? As a starry-eyed eight-year-old, I dreamt of becoming the next Sachin Tendulkar. what were the geography classes for if not to dream him. Who of us here did not want to be the next Kiran Bedi? The strong police officer, who fined the prime minister's vehicle for a violation. Didn't any of you want to be like Chetan Bhagat? (of course, I was young then). 

Mohandas Pai? Remember the name? When engineering was the fad when everyone who did not get to become a doctor wanted to be the next big software engineer, the man was big. Rajnikanth? Ah, the quintessential hero of my generation. 

I adored every one of them. Wanted to be like one of them at various stages of life. Thought very highly of them. Had a heart full of respect. 

When E.Sreedharan, the metro man joined the BJP, I went back to the time when I adored the man. The Metro man. He built the Delhi Metro without corruption. As a student of politics, he was the stereotypical hero. My world then wanted a piece of him. He was always in the limelight. The Kerala Metro wanted him. I hoped and prayed he agreed to join the TN metro. The inner Tamilian in me! 

At various stages of life, all of them had disappointed me. I had kept them on the pedestal. And all of them fell off it. Every one of them. 

Where did it all go wrong? Is it wrong to put people up on the high throne in our minds? And then put them down every time you don't agree with them? Can I be philosophical and brush it off as differences of opinion? Is it just so simple to do away with the heroes you grew up worshipping? To take them off your head and make the heart understand that they are mortals, mere fallible humans? 

I wish Dhoni does not join twitter and abuse and hate like every other person. I don't want Rafa to one day come out in the open to be an extortionist. To hear about the 'X' and 'Y' come out as sexual predators as I heard about Ravi will be brain-numbing. If the brain could be numbed! 

Idealizing flawed and imperfect human beings was indeed my idiocy. Of course, there cannot be perfect homo sapiens on this side of the world. 

But is it all a travesty to just dream of being someone else? 

 

Are Social media friendships for real?

Friendships are fascinating; Ain't it? 

Who was your first friend? Do you remember your first friend? When you were still learning the art of walking and talking. Are you still in touch with them? I'm one of the lucky few for whom the first friendships have stayed on. 'S' was a friend even before I knew it. We were 2 then. She is the big doc now; But for me, she is still the 'S' I know. For more than 30 years. 

'J', was the first friend I made in the real world; The world outside the campus we lived in. Who was yours? Do you remember your early conversations? 'J' stuck on too! After so many years, we still talk nonsense, as only friends can.

When did you talk last to your primary school bestie? Sadly 'Be' my BF from school lost touch! Life happened I presume! The senior school besties 'B' and 'T' stick on. Few fell along the way though. College and work? But for few, not many has stuck on. Friendships are such I suppose.  

Through the growth process, we call life, people come in and go. Circumstances bring us together to a few; 'S'  would never have been friends with me, if her dad not chose to live next door. 'J' went to the same church. 'B' studied with me in the same school and 'T' played on the basketball team as I did. 'Circumstances'; That is the word; The word which brought as together. Someone else was deciding my acquaintances, rather friends. Providence. Luck. Parents. Work & Study place. Whatever. 

Then social media happened. By preference, Twitter happened. 

Suddenly the person I talk to on Twitter does not know me. Neither the fact that I'm fat and ugly. They know my views. Just my ideas, beliefs and principles. And we become friends. Not by circumstance. But by choice. I get to pick and choose people who speak my language; who has my belief system; who could understand my principles and ideologies. 

Isn't that a paradigm shift in relating to people? 

Suddenly, I realized my friends on SM have more variety to life than those I had known forever. There is a CA, a banker, a bird watcher and an IT professional. Circumstance did not take me through any of these. 

I'm still a beginner in SM friendships. I cannot confidently say I have found friends for life on Twitter. A few may become Best friends for life. I don't know. But I'm sure I have seen and talked to a few who have found real joy in friendships online. 

Are ideologically similar relationships better? Can friendships be beyond ideologies and principles of life in the first place? 

I'm not giving up the 'S' and 'J' and every other beautiful people which life threw at me. I'm sure life's circumstance will flip a few more along the way. I still find it difficult to relate to people who I could never see; I'm sure there are a few wonderful friends out there, who I will make. I'm learning; I'm learning. But the shift is for real. 

Friendships on SM is here to stay and from what I know, is beautiful in its own way.

The curse of the girl child!

Scene 1:

The doctor picked up the baby. The pink limbs stretching itself, the baby crying; A life on earth is born. Another! The first cry can be heard outside. 

The man was waiting with bated breath. It was his child. He could hear the cry. His heart missed a beat. The granny next to her had a tear. Even before the tear dropped by, the nurse brought the baby to them. 

Baby boy! hurray, you can hear the man shout. The baffled nurse said, "sir, it is a girl". "No, it cannot be. I cannot have a girl. I know it is a boy; I know it is a boy. You are cheating". The man's elation turned to bereavement. 

Scene 2:

An IUD! Intra-Uterine Death. The baby born was not crying. Stillborn, they called it. The life that was supposed to have never happened. News spread. You could see the wailing outside. It was painful. The air was thick. You could feel the tension in the air. As the babies relatives came over to gather the lifeless body, the crying hit the roof. And then the eyes fell on the beautiful one. Still, yet lovely. 

The wailing stopped abruptly. Oh, a girl? They all stopped suddenly. Looked at each other. Just walked out. The pain they had felt is gone. It was just a girl they had lost. Not worth crying over. 

Two separate incidents. One week. Two different hospitals. 

After listening to the wife tell the first story and my sister the second one, I died within. My wife and my sister. Two women, who are beautiful in their own ways. Both doctors. Brilliant minds. Sculpted in the image of the creator. Much better people than I can ever aspire to be. What makes them lesser human beings in the minds of these vile offenders in the stories just coz they are women?  

Men, oh men, when will you step aside and let the women live. Let them be. Just be. 

Tests in Australia and Nostalgia!

 It was a difficult night to sleep. As I finished some late night work, my eyes kept going back to the clock and the mind to Brisbane. A few hours from then, the Indian openers will be walking in to bat in what could very well be a historic win. 

Win? In Gabba? Against this Australian attack? on a fifth-day pitch which is breaking? You are joking. ain't you? My fearful mind was chiding the heart. The heart, the hopeful heart, knew it all very all. It has been broken many times. Don't dare to hope, I told my heart as I went to bed. I set the clock for 6.00. Did not want another heartbreak by getting up earlier than that. 

Ah, we only have had heartbreaks in Australia.  

I was yet to enter my teens when an Indian cricket tour to Australia hit me. 1999! A man called Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar was all I dreamt off then. Sadly, SRT was the only man standing between Australia and a win. One man cannot win test cricket matches! Lesser men around him fell like nine pins. India was a walkover. 

The 2000s saw good Indian teams fight tooth and nail to win a test here and there. But winning a series? Winning a chase in Gabba? They still were dreams. petty hopes of the romantic heart! 

Then Virat Kohli and 2018 happened. We won! We finally won a series. Yet, it was not fulfilling. The Aussies then complained that they were not a full team. It almost felt like beating a dead snake. Also, we never won in Gabba. Gabba, the mighty gabba still remained the fortress!

I woke up trepidatiously at 6.00. Do I look at the score? Can I bear one more heartbreak? What if the score read 50 - 4? What if it read 70 - 0, said the hopeful heart. Hope, is a beautiful thing! I dared myself to switch on. A young man without fear was taking on the Aussies. The man knew no fear. Then another walked in. The same age. The same generation. He knew no fear either. Then another, and another. A generation which was not scarred by failure. A generation which knew no fear. They were carefree spirits, yet they cared! They cared enough to pull India through to the greatest cricketing victory Indian test history has seen. 

Experience scars you! My generation needed this gabba. Each one of us was scarred by our own insecurities, fears, shortcomings, failures, bugbears, broken bodies, bruises and misfortunes We needed to see that they could be confronted. And conquered. For hope conquers fear. And fearlessness leads to victory. 

The fortress is breached. Fear is conquered. Hope prevails. 

Test cricket marches on!